On my first day back at uni, things went well. I got lots of papers downloaded and filed in endnote. While I was doing this I also scanned about 8 boxes of slides. A good day.
On Wednesday I continued downloading papers until morning tea, when the last of my slides was scanned and I decided to burn them to CD....the CD burner was dead (did I just hear the first nail being hammered into the coffin?). I put in a work req. for it and decided to go to morning tea. When I got back the network was down...no more paper downloading for the day (my, that sounded like a second coffin nail). Well, I thought, I could go analyse some DNA sequences and determine the next step in processing them, which I did. As a result I needed to order a new primer....but we do that online and the network, as I have already established, was down (Nail 3). I went home thinking "that wasn't great, but at least I got that sequencing numbercrunched."
Today I came in and tried to order the primer. The network is up! Yay! But I find I am no longer on the books as staff so I can't get an order number to send with my online order and must get someone else to do it (they didn't get to it till 4pm and I still don't have an order number. The person who actually does that is not back at work yet - Nail 4). OK I thought, I really don't need it yet as i need to concentrate some more DNA before I can work with it, so I'll just use our brand new rotor in the ultracentrifuge. It stopped at 14600rpm (instead of 40000)...um...several phone calls, much checking of paperwork later (after we actually found the lost paperwork)...It appears we were sent the wrong rotor (a 40L instead of a 45L) The 40L isn't designed for our centrifuge - apart from that it looks physically identical. I probably should be glad nothing blew up really. It took 3 months for that rotor to arrive. I'm not expecting a quick turnaround to get the right one...Nail 5 slamming in there.
I mentioned this at smoko and was reminded that the universe is sliding towards chaos and I should just give in and accept that this will continue and get worse. It all falls apart and the centre cannot hold. Philosophical bunch in my uni department.
I think I might copy this before posting. No point in tempting fate
1 comment:
Oh...and one last thing...the computer guy looked at my burner and said..yes its dead. We can provide a reader, but not a burner...not much point really.
Post a Comment